European Research Reloaded : Cooperation and Integration among Europeanized States
European integration has had an ever deepening impact on the member states. The first wave of research concerned the process of institution building and policy developments at the European Union (EU) level. The second wave, on Europeanization used the resulting integration as an explanatory factor in understanding domestic political change and continuity.This book argues that a third wave of research on the EU is needed to adequately understand the increased interconnectedness between the European and national political levels. We posit that this third wave should be sensitive to the temporal dimension of European integration and Europeanization. In particular, we ask: how has Europeanization affected current modes of integration and cooperation in the EU.
EU law and economics
Examines the design and evolution of European law from the perspective of economics. It draws on various branches of the economic sciences including rational choice and game theory, and institutional and behavioural economics to expand our understanding of EU law and its effects. It seeks to complement doctrinal research on EU law by generating insights.
Environmental security and environmental management : The role of risk assessment ; Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Research Workhop on The Role of Risk Assessment in Environmental Security and Emergency Preparedness in the Mediterranean Region, held in Eilat, Israel, April 15-18, 2004
The concept of “environmental security” has emerged as one basis for understanding international conflicts. This phrase can mean a variety of things. It can signify security issues stemming from environmental concerns or conflicting needs, or it can mean that the environment is treated as a resource for the long term, and the question is what should be done today to preserve the quality of the environment in the future. In the same way that energy security is about ensuring access to energy for the long run, it can also mean that pressing environmental concerns create a situation where different countries and communities are forced to collaboratively design a unified response, even if cooperation is not generally in the logic of their relations. Over the last several years, the authors of this book and their colleagues have tried to demonstrate the power of risk assessment and decision analysis as valuable tools that decision makers should use for a broad range of environmental problems, including environmental security. Risk analysis is almost more a state of mind or a way of looking at problems than it is a kind of algorithm or a set of recipes. It projects a kind of rationality on problems and forces a certain degree of quantitative rigor, as opposed to the all too common tendency of making environmental recommendations based on anecdotal evidence.
Environmental Geology : Handbook of Field Methods and Case Studies
As earth’s population continues to grow and the detrimental aftereffects of industrialization and environmental negligence become more apparent, society has become more aware of, and concerned about, stewardship of the natural environment – water, soil, and air. Sustainable development has become more widely received and promoted in many parts of the world. The need is now critical for earth and environmental scientists and engineers to work together to implement technologies that can preserve our environment. The Earth’s population was 6.6 billion as of April 2007 according to the U.S. Census Bureau. This number is expected to rise to 9.4 billion by 2050. The population is increasing the demand for natural resources and energy, and increasing stress on the environment. Thus, protection of the environment and remediation of damage to the environment must be a priority. It is also important to develop procedures that will help to avert further damage to the environment and to recognize as early as possible the risks associated with changes in the environment. Many methodologies and technologies have become more advanced in the past few decades, and new technologies and approaches have been developed, all to address the growing need for environmental assessment, monitoring, and remediation. As these technologies have grown, the need for interdisciplinary cooperation has also become more apparent.
Engineering Societies in the Agents World VIII ; 8th International Workshop, ESAW 2007, Athens, Greece, October 22-24, 2007, Revised Selected Papers
This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Engineering Societies in the Agents World, ESAW 2007, held in Athens, Greece, in October 2007. The 19 revised full papers were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in this book. The papers are organized in topical sections on electronic institutions, models of complex distributed systems with agents and societies; interaction in agent societies; engineering social intelligence in multi-agent systems; trust and reputation in agent societies; analysis, design and development of agent societies.
Engineering Societies in the Agents World VII ; 7th International Workshop, ESAW 2006 Dublin, Ireland, September 6-8, 2006 Revised Selected and Invited Papers
It cover main themes: Engineering multi-agent systems, Methodologies for analysis, design, development and verification of agent societies, Interaction and coordination in agent societies, Autonomic agent societies, Trust in agent societies For
Engineering Societies in the Agents World VI ; 6th International Workshop, ESAW 2005, Kusadasi, Turkey, October 26-28, 2005, Revised Selected and Invited Papers
ESAW 2005 took place at the Pine Bay Hotel in Kusadasi, Turkey at the end of the October 2005. It was organized as a stand-alone event as were ESAW 2004and ESAW 2003.Following the initial ESAW vision,which wasset in 1999, by the members of the working group on “Communication, Coordination and Collaboration” of Agentlink, ESAW 2005 continued to focus on the engineering of complex software systems in terms of multi-agent societies, especially the social and environmental aspects of such societies.
Engineering societies in the agents world V : 5th international workshop, ESAW 2004, Toulouse, France, October 20-22, 2004 : revised selected and invited papers
The ?rst workshop “Engineering Societies in the Agents World” (ESAW) was held in August 2000, in conjunction with the 14th European Conference on Arti?cial Intelligence (ECAI 2000) in Berlin. It was launched by a group of - searchers who thought that the design and development of MASs (multi-agent systems) not only needed adequate theoretical foundations but also a call for new techniques, methodologies and infrastructures to develop MASs as arti?cial societies. The second ESAW was co-located with the European Agent Summer School (ACAI 2001) in Prague, and mostly focused on logics and languages, middleware, infrastructures and applications. In Madrid, the third ESAW c- centrated on models and methodologies and took place with the “Cooperative Information Agents” workshop (CIA 2002). The fourth ESAW in London was the ?rst one that ran as a stand-alone event: apart from the usual works on methodologies and models, it also stressed the issues of applications and m- tidisciplinary models. Based on the success of previous ESAWs, and also given that the di?cult challenges in the construction of arti?cial societies are not yet fully addressed, the ?fth ESAW workshop was organized in the same spirit as its predecessors.
Energy transition and energy democracy in East Asia
Provides down-to-earth information on what kind of actions are being taken by the Government, Local community, Businesses, Researchers, NGOs on the energy transition in this region. It gives an updated picture of the energy transition in the East Asian countries, where the economic growth, as well as CO2 emission growth, is significant.
Energy in Africa : Challenges and Opportunities
This open access book presents a picture of the current energy challenges on the African continent (and the Sub-Saharan region in particular) and proposes pathways to an accelerated energy transition. Starting with an analysis of the status quo and the outlook for Africa’s energy demand and energy access, it provides an account of the available resources, including hydrocarbons and renewable energy resources, which are playing an increasingly crucial role. It then moves on to analyze the level of investment required to scale-up Africa’s energy systems, shedding light on the key barriers and elaborating on potential solutions. It also provides a suggestion for improving the effectiveness of EU–Africa cooperation. While mainly intended for policymakers and academics, this book also speaks to a broader audience interested in gaining an overview of the challenges and opportunities of the African energy sector today and in the future.
Emerging States at Crossroads
This volume analyzes the economic, social, and political challenges that emerging states confront today. Notwithstanding the growing importance of the ‘emerging states’ in global affairs and governance, many problems requiring immediate solutions have emerged at home largely as a consequence of the rapid economic development and associated sociopolitical changes. The middle-income trap is a major economic challenge faced by emerging states. This volume regards interest coordination for technological upgrading as crucial to avoid the trap and examines how various emerging states are grappling with this challenge by fostering public-private cooperation, voluntary associations of market players, and/or social networks. Social disparity is another serious problem. This volume argues that the economic, social, and political problems are interwoven in the sense that the emerging states need to build political consensus in order to tackle the economic and social difficulties. Democratic institutions have not always been successful in this respect.
Embedded Software and Systems ; Vol. 3820 ; 2nd International Conference, ICESS 2005, Xi'an, China, December 16-18, 2005, Proceedings
Welcome to the proceedings of the 2005 International Conference on Emb- ded Software and Systems (ICESS 2005) held in Xian, China, December 16-18, 2005. With the advent of VLSI system level integration and system-on-chip, the center of gravity of the computer industry is now moving from personal c- puting into embedded computing. Embedded software and systems are incre- ingly becoming a key technological component of all kinds of complex technical systems, ranging from vehicles, telephones, aircraft, toys, security systems, to medical diagnostics, weapons, pacemakers, climate control systems, etc. The ICESS 2005 conference provided a premier international forum for - searchers, developers and providers from academia and industry to address all resulting profound challenges; to present and discuss their new ideas, - search results, applications and experience; to improve international com- nication and cooperation; and to promote embedded software and system - dustrialization and wide applications on all aspects of embedded software and systems.
ECSCW 2007 ; Proceedings of the 10th European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, Limerick, Ireland, 24-28 September 2007
The volume includes papers addressing novel interaction technologies for CSCW systems, new models and architectures for groupware systems, studies of communication and coordination among mobile actors, studies of cooperative work in complex settings, studies of groupware systems in actual use in real-world settings, and theories and techniques to support the development of cooperative applications. The papers present emerging technologies alongside new methods and approaches to the development of this important class of applications.
Economic Liberalization and Integration Policy : Options for Eastern Europe and Russia
The authors of this book analyze the dynamics of macroeconomic and structural developments in Eastern Europe and Russia, with special attention paid to problems of international and national integration, "Dutch disease" and natural resource dependency, and distortions in institutional reforms. The analysis also sheds light on how these problems have implications for cooperation among OECD-countries. A critical focus is on institutional adjustment and learning, human capital formation, trade and foreign investment.
Ecology of Social Evolution
This book brings together renowned researchers working on sociality in different animals. For the first time, they compile the evidence for the importance of ecological factors in the evolution of social life, ranging from invertebrate to vertebrate social systems, and evaluate its importance versus that of relatedness. Answers are given to important questions such as: - Which factors favour group living in social invertebrates and vertebrates? - Are there general differences in the evolutionary forces promoting social life in social insects versus cooperatively breeding vertebrates? - Why are there only so few eusocial vertebrates? - Can relatedness within social groups be a by-product arising from the fact that neighbours are generally kin?
East Asian Economic Regionalism: Feasibilities and Challenges
Economic regionalism has become a worldwide phenomenon. Since the Asian financial crisis, East Asian countries are accelerating the ongoing market-driven economic integration as well as institutional economic integration. The question is whether East Asia can reach an East Asian FTA (EAFTA), which is the first step towards institutional economic integration. East Asian Economic Regionalism attempts to analyze the feasibilities of economic integration in East Asia and to discuss emerging economic integration efforts in East Asia with special reference to an East Asian FTA. Although economic integration is desirable economically, positions and approaches of each regional economy toward East Asian economic integration may differ depending on the circumstances of the countries concerned. East Asian Economic Regionalism provides diverse positions on East Asian economic integration by ASEAN countries, as well as the Northeastern countries of China, Japan and Korea. The volume also provides economic assessment of EAFTA and evaluates East Asian economic integration.
Dynamic Modeling of Monetary and Fiscal Cooperation Among Nations
The first four chapters introduce the reader to the dynamics of fiscal and monetary policy cooperation. Issues covered include: fiscal coordination, fiscal stringency requirements, structural and bargaining power asymmetries and the design of monetary and fiscal policymaking in a monetary union. In the four last chapters multiple-player settings with aspects of fiscal and/or monetary coordination are analyzed using the endogenous coalition formation approach. The analysis is focused on shock and model asymmetries and issues of multi-country coordination in the presence of (possibly many) monetary unions.
Drug development and approval process
Drug discovery is the process of identifying and characterizing molecules with the potential to safely modulate disease, with a goal to bring medicines that can improve the lives of patients. It is a lengthy and resource intensive process, that requires close cooperation across multiple disciplines. Optimizing the process of drug discovery is of great interest to the pharmaceutical industry, as the efficient identification and selection of suitable drug candidates can have a dramatic impact on the cost and profitability of new medicines.
Do-All Computing in Distributed Systems : Cooperation in the Presence of Adversity
Do-All Computing in Distributed Systems: Cooperation in the Presence of Adversity is the first book that presents an in depth study of cooperation problems, abstracted in terms of the Do-All problem, where a collection of processors cooperatively perform a collection of independent tasks in the presence of adversity.
Disseminative Capabilities : A Case Study of Collaborative Product Development in the Automotive Industry
Nowadays, cooperating in Product Development seems to be a dominant strategy to lower costs and risks, to fully utilize capacities, and to gain access to lacking knowledge assets. Oppat analyzes cooperations in Product Development with a special focus on the automotive industry. He seeks answers to the question of how knowledge transfer between involved partners takes place. Although knowledge transfer and its success levers (e.g. absorptive capacity) are well-researched phenomena, equivalent investigations of the sender and her capabilities (DiC - Disseminative Capabilities) impacting inter-organizational transfer success are lacking. The in-depth case studies conducted concentrate on joint car development projects between Magna Steyr, an Austrian-based company, and German-based BMW, Mercedes Benz, and Audi. The research results clearly indicate that DiC have an impact on the knowledge transfer process and can explain why the analyzed projects differ in terms of transfer success. Based on the research findings, this work provides managerial implications for all eight dimensions of DiC and, by deploying insights from the empirical investigations, outlines ways to develop them successfully.



















